The brilliant “Short Circuit” by Wolf Haas will get inside your head as if all your electrical brain waves have been severely damaged

/ Pamela Kramer

Regarding author Wolf Haas’s novel, “Short Circuit”: It’s genre-less. It boasts much suspense, but suspense is by no means its major element. It’s certainly not a murder mystery though there are a couple of murders that play a fairly important role in the plot. It definitely is not a comedy even though I smiled and laughed all the way through it. It would be selling the novel short and missing the whole point if we were to label it a character study even though its two protagonists are wonderful characters. Can we label it anything, then? Yes. It’s a puzzle. And “puzzle” is not a genre. But reading the entire novel will, I suspect, leave you puzzled; and that puzzlement, I am quite sure, was the author’s intent.

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‘Enormous Wings’ by Laurie Frankel is a book about growing old and the choices we face

/ Pamela Kramer

“Enormous Wings,” the new novel by Laurie Frankel, should come with a warning: This book will make you angry on behalf of women who are treated as second class citizens and denied their rights. But in addition to feeling anger, the story of Pepper Mills, a septuagenarian who has recently moved to Vista View Retirement Community in Austin, Texas, will have you smiling as you admire her spunk and her wry sense of humor, and, of course, the incredibly ridiculous situation in which she finds herself enmeshed.

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‘The Shippers’ by Katherine Center is the ultimate shipboard romcom

/ Pamela Kramer

Katherine Center has cleverly titled her newest rom-com, “The Shippers.” The setting is a cruise ship, so in that sense the title is logical. But I learned a new term: “ship” is slang for relationship. To be specific, the verb means wishing for two people to be together; the noun is the actual romantic pairing. In this novel, the romantic couple that is being “shipped” appears to be clear from the start, but as we know, things in fiction (and real life) are not always what they appear to be.

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‘The Last Mandarin’ by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung is nonstop action and danger

/ Pamela Kramer

“The Last Mandarin” is a gripping, high-octane rollercoaster ride as authors Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung keep the danger on the front burner with tension that doesn’t abate until almost the last page. From the White House to Beijing, from noodle shops in Hong Kong to the necropolis of the first emperor of China, the jockeying between world superpowers is mind-bending.

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‘Come Back to the World’ by Catherine Ryan Hyde is about relationships and our connections to the world

/ Pamela Kramer

Catherine Ryan Hyde’s thought-provoking novels force readers to consider their lives and their own values and morals. They are not thrillers with fast, action-filled pages that drive the plot forward. Her newest novel, “Come Back to the World,” is one that is filled with quiet retrospection and conversations about life. It’s about a world-famous author who after her debut book rocked the publishing world, disappeared.

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“The Right to Remain”; James Gripando’s 20th Jack Swyteck Novel

/ Pamela Kramer

“The Right to Remain” is author James Grippando”s twentieth Jack Swyteck novel and my first experience with the author and his protagonist, criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck. And the very good news is that Grippando makes the reader so aware of all of the characters’ strengths, flaws, beliefs, and concerns that we get to know them well during the course of the novel and don’t for a moment miss the backgrounds provided in the first nineteen. As a stand-alone legal/suspense piece of work, it’s a riveting page-turner from beginning to end.

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Matt Witten’s new novel, “51%”, serves as both a warning and an extremely enjoyable read

/ Pamela Kramer

Author Matt Witten’s new mystery novel, “51%,” is both scary and suspenseful, and it points clearly to a problem which presents a major trap for America. No, it’s not about the potential takeover of the country and the world by artificial intelligence. That subject has already been treated in numerous articles, essays, videos, and some excellent novels. But in “51%,” an equally dangerous trap for the U.S.A. is at the heart of this complex novel. This time, it’s the all-too-likely takeover of the country by the world of corporations and powerful syndicates, groups of those companies and institutions. Even as the U.S. exists right now, huge corporations are so ubiquitous and so powerful that it sometimes feels hopeless to attempt to overcome their power. And that is essentially what this novel is about.

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‘The Last Letters of Sally and Walter’ by Cammie McGovern is about family, relationships, and Scrabble

/ Pamela Kramer

When we think of letters, and perhaps especially “last letters,” we think of heartfelt correspondence between people sharing ideas and emotions. We don’t usually think of the board game Scrabble and the letters we use when playing that game. The main characters in “The Last Letters of Sally and Walter” meet at an independent living community when Sally decides to try attending the Scrabble club one evening.

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‘No One Knew’ is the second in the ‘Noelle Marshall’ series by Kendra Ellliot

/ Pamela Kramer

“No One Knew” is a thriller that grabs you from the first page, wherein a lonely teenager finds a dead body. Author Kendra Elliot knows the central Oregon setting well, and through her capable descriptions, we feel the bitter cold of winter as main character Noelle Marshall, along with her coworkers and FBI boyfriend, try to figure out who is behind the murder of that man and two other dead bodies that appear in succession and why the FBI is getting whispers about something big being planned by domestic terrorists.

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‘Mad Mabel’ by Sally Hepworth is brilliant and unexpectedly gut-wrenching

/ Pamela Kramer

“Mad Mabel” is a magnificent novel. Usually, after reading a story that is engrossing, that has unexpected twists, and that really packs a punch at the end, writing the review is easy. I like to say about a great novel, “The review practically writes itself.” So while I think this is a brilliant novel, and I believe it would be a fabulous choice as a book club read, the review for this complex story is not writing itself. There are so many layers to Mabel’s story that delicacy is required so as to not spoil the novel for those who have not read it.

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‘Agnes Sharp and the Wedding to Die For’ by Leonie Swann is the last novel in this senior murder mystery trilogy

/ Pamela Kramer

When one gets to a “certain age,” it’s a kick to read novels, especially murder mysteries, in which the main character is also a person of a “certain age.” And in Leonie Swann’s very clever “Miss Sharp Investigates” series, Agnes Sharp and her fellow pensioners, who all live together in Sunset Hall, her large home, prove that age is no deterrent to fighting crime.

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